


Post Mortem

by cookie_rock



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alliance Intelligence Deals With Scarif, Anger, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Post-Battle of Scarif, Post-Battle of Yavin, Post-Rogue One, Rogue One Spoilers, Survivor Guilt, it is 2018 and the author is still processing rogue one feels, zero bothans died to bring us this fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 05:42:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16079624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookie_rock/pseuds/cookie_rock
Summary: Post mortem:(n) 1. an examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death.2. an analysis or discussion of an event held soon after it has occurred, especially in order to determine why it was a failure.In the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Yavin IV, what's left of Alliance Intelligence tries to pick up what's left from Scarif.





	Post Mortem

**_After Action Report: Battle of Scarif_ **  
**_~~Lieutenant~~ Captain Saria Kyre, Alliance Intelligence_**

Saria Kyre didn't have a dress uniform. She didn't have a uniform at all anymore—she had, once upon a time, when she was a mediocre communications recruit, but it had been reassigned the second she'd been snatched up for Intelligence. All she had was a jacket that had long since sagged in the humidity, and a battered pair of lieutenant's insignia, shoved deep into the tiny locker in her tiny quarters, so she pinned them onto her jacket, paired it with a pair of trim khaki pants, and stood at attention with what remained of the personnel stationed on Yavin IV at they lit what seemed like a thousand empty pyres. Then, while everyone else went off to work out logistics of the evacuation or celebrate the destruction of the Death Star—and rightfully so—she fled to a small, mostly-unused balcony near the top of the pyramid, where she hunkered down with a datapad, and sweated her ass off in the hot jungle air, and tried to wrap her brain around how in the hell they were going to move forward.

_It is the professional opinion of this operative that Rebel Intelligence is_

She hadn't really cried, rather than leaking tears for her own purposes, in...she didn't know how long. Time got fuzzy when you hopped planets too much and your life story changed on each one. Now, as she struggled to find the right words for this report without just typing “We are totally fucked” over and over again, the magnitude of loss swept over her and she dropped her head and started to cry. Quietly. Not for long. She didn't subscribe to the belief, loudly declared by much of Rebel Alliance Special Forces, that tears were a sign of weakness; she just didn't have much time before she had to get back on a ship. Rebellions were built on hope, not pathetic little girls who couldn't stop crying.

_that Alliance Intelligence is in an extremely vulnerable position._

She had been running the second the ship landed, throwing herself out of the door before the ramp was even on the ground, but of course it was too late. She'd known it was too late when she'd got Cassian's message, but she'd dropped everything, lost a contact months in the cultivating, got passage on the fastest ship she could find. Two ships, 37 standard hours in space travel, thousands of credits she didn't have, and she'd arrived just in time to be too late.

(“General Draven listed you among the potential operatives for Operation Fracture,” Mon Mothma had volunteered earlier, when the two of them stood near each other at the single mass funeral.

“Andor was better at that sort of thing. And it was deemed necessary I continue what I was doing."

“Yet...here you are.”

Saria had glanced up. Mon Mothma was notoriously hard to read, but pit a career politician and rebel leader against a seasoned spy doing her dirty work and see who was fooling whom. There was nothing but sorrow there. Endless, bottomless sorrow. “Yes,” she had said, simply.

“I'm sorry for your loss."

“It's the Alliance's loss.")

_It is frankly impossible to overstate the impact on our network from the loss of a Fulcrum, especially on top of losing so many other operatives._

It _was_ the Alliance's loss. And yes, it was also hers—she had found a family here amongst the strange, damaged people who became spies in this kind of war, a family forged of proximity to horror, twisted jokes, lies, murder, nightmares, and mutual understanding of the others' demons, and she could barely breathe for the feeling of that loss, the loss of everyone she loved, like a hammer in her skull, like needles under her fingernails. But literally none of that would matter if the Empire recovered before the Alliance did. A huge portion of their ground operatives were gone. Everyone who could be there was dead. The pieces of the Rebel Intelligence network, not least her own, needed to be cobbled back together before the Empire brought its full might into the war they had started, and she didn't think they had the time.

_Until and unless the whereabouts of certain agents in the field can be confirmed, this operative stands as the second ranking field operative in Alliance Intelligence, after General Draven. After some debate_

At one point she had thrown her insignia in Draven's face and told him where he could shove them, screamed at him that it was his fault that fully half the Intelligence Corps had been blown to bits, that he should have done something different, _done something better_. Should have told her sooner. So she could have been there. So she could have...what? What could one more person have done except become the pieces of one more corpse?

The pyres had all been empty, but she could smell burning flesh.

_it has become clear that our remaining network is not sufficient for the purposes of engaging in intergalactic warfare. The destruction of the superweapon was a major blow, that's undeniable. But given the speed at which we estimate the Empire will recover from its relatively minor losses at Scarif, and given the years that went into building this network in the first place, this operative echoes General Draven's assessment that the Alliance must seek outside intelligence sources as quickly as can be managed. Rebuilding an in-house intelligence network sufficient to the task of what is coming is simply not possible in the time we have._

(“At this rate we couldn't find our ass with both hands,” she had said flatly, and Draven had grunted his agreement. “And also everyone in the room is trying to find our ass first, and also kill us with it.” Here the general had raised an eyebrow. “Sorry. I'm bad at analogies.”

There had been a heavy pause. “The Bothans, then."

“I don't have any other ideas.”)

_A full reorganization of security and classification procedures and processes is already underway. This operative is aware that some parties consider this an overreaction, and cannot disagree strongly enough. Field Operatives are fully trained for the eventuality of capture, and should escape be impossible, would attempt by any means available to take their own lives before interrogation could occur. But Imperial officers are not stupid, and sometimes neither course is an option. It is unlikely we will ever know exactly what happened on Scarif, but in such a piecemeal operation in heavily-secured territory without anything like adequate support, the Alliance must prepare for the possibility, however unlikely, that someone was compromised. We know the Empire has access to interrogation techniques and technology, Force-related and otherwise, against which normal people cannot be expected to stand._

The only good thing about the Empire was that they only had a couple of people who could reach into your brain with theirs. The rest of them would just use their hands.

 _This operative does not wish to indicate that Alliance Intelligence Operatives can in any way be considered normal._ she typed, and then deleted, and then typed again.

(When she and Draven had finally come to the exhausted cease-fire of two people who couldn't kill each other because they didn't have any other colleagues, he had pinned captain's insignia on her jacket. “You ever throw this back at me, it'll be the last thing you do.”

“You can go fuck yourself,” she had snapped before she thought better of it. “You let Cassian Andor waltz into a death trap with no support and no means of extraction. I don't owe you shit, sir.”

For a minute it had looked like he was going to take a swing at her. For a minute she had really wanted him to try. Instead he had pointed at the door. “You don't owe me. You owe them. Get back out there and fix this.”)

_On a personal note, this operative wishes to extend a hearty “fuck you” to everyone who let this happen._

She hit “Send” before she could change her mind. Then she stood up, and wiped her eyes, and went to go find her transport.


End file.
